The Ode to Joy

Watch Movie

The Ode to Joy

2006

2h 15m

6.0(3 votes)

Drama

History

War

Music

Overview

Based on the true story of the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp in World War I. It depicts the friendship of the German POWs with the director of the camp and local residents at the stage of Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture, in Japan.

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

The people behind it

Cast & crew

9 featured cast members

Starring

Ken Matsudaira

Matsue

Bruno Ganz

Kurt Heinrich

Hiroshi Abe

Iko

Jun Kunimura

Takagi

Oliver Bootz

Carl Baum

Kostja Ullmann

Herman Lake

Suzuka Ohgo

Shio

Shirō Mifune

Kazuhiko Takeuchi

Creative team

Directed by: Masanobu Deme
Written by: Motomu Furuta

Similar Movies

7.0

1937

The Woman I Love

In World War I France, a pilot falls in love with the wife of his friend and superior officer.

Movie

5.5

2014

Der Rücktritt

In 2012 German Bundespraesident Christian Wulff declares his resignation in the great hall of Bellevue Palace. At the side of his wife, he had to face the pressure of the media for 68 days while struggling for office of head of state of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Movie

7.5

2005

Walk the Line

A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

Movie

7.0

2012

Firebrands

Barely scraping by making an honest living as a rural yakuza, Hachiya (Yasukaze Motomiya) dreams of the City of Flowers. Unable to conceal their growing frustration at their everyday lives, he and his partner, Sagane (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi), choose to pursue their own paths as yakuza, hiding a new major source of income from the family. But when the family captain (Kazuyoshi Ozawa) shows up for the first time in ten years...

Movie

8.0

2025

After the Quake

Based on four of the six short stories compiled in Murakami Haruki's anthology, After the Quake explores the complex aftermath of Japan’s earthquakes and other global crises. (Movie version of the TV drama).

Movie

5.4

2013

Kids Return: The Reunion

Set 10 years after "Kids Return." Shinji and Masaru have graduated from high school with different paths in their lives. Shinji attempted to become boxer and Masaru a yakuza. They both tried to rise to the top of their respective fields.

Movie

8.3

1956

Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Movie

7.5

2002

Dolls

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Movie

7.3

1940

The Mortal Storm

The Roth family leads a quiet life in a small village in the German Alps during the early 1930s. After the Nazis come to power, the family is divided and Martin Breitner, a family friend, is caught up in the turmoil.

Movie

7.9

1937

Grand Illusion

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.

Movie

7.8

1957

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

Movie

8.1

1931

M

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

Movie

6.5

1914

The Pride of the Firm

Der Stolz der Firma, meaning The Pride of the Business, is a classic German silent film from 1914. The film tells the story of a shrewd apprentice and is filmed in the comical style of director Lubitsch. This is one of the few Lubitsch films from World War I that wasn’t lost.

Movie

7.6

1965

Doctor Zhivago

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

Movie

8.3

1940

The Great Dictator

Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.

Movie

8.3

1957

Paths of Glory

A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.

Movie

8.0

1962

Lawrence of Arabia

During World War I, English officer Thomas Edward 'T.E.' Lawrence sets out to unite and lead the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes to fight the Turks.

Movie

2025

CODA

An intimate portrait of Victoria Chorale — a Singaporean, alumni community choir led by Nelson Kwei, as he prepares them for a return to the international competition stage in Tokyo for the first time in 18 years. And possibly also their last ever. CODA is an observation of the relationship between the music and its Singaporean makers.

Movie

4.2

1977

The Standard

During the final days of the First World War, Officer Menis does his duty in defending the battle flag of the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire, while his fellow troops, a motley gang recruited from several different countries not loyal to the royal family, simply try to survive by any means possible.

Movie

6.1

2006

Kokoda

A bitter battle is fought between Australian and Japanese soldiers along the Kokoda trail in New Guinea during World War II.

Movie

Recommended Movies

6.7

2023

The Last Rifleman

A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.

Movie

6.5

2006

Flyboys

The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.

Movie

6.2

2012

Emperor

As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will be hanged as a war criminal. Influencing his ruling is his quest to find Aya, an exchange student he met years earlier in the U.S.

Movie

6.7

1979

All Quiet on the Western Front

At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.

Movie

6.4

2019

The Kill Team

When Andrew Briggman — a young soldier in the US Army during the invasion of Afghanistan — witnesses the murderous behavior of fellow soldiers, under the direction of a malevolent Sergeant, he faces a moral dilemma. His increasingly-violent platoon becomes suspicious that someone in their ranks has turned on them, and Andrew begins to fear for his safety. A fictionalized dramatization based on a true story.

Movie

7.3

2011

War Horse

On the brink of the First World War, Albert's beloved horse Joey is sold to the Cavalry by his father. Against the backdrop of the Great War, Joey begins an odyssey full of danger, joy, and sorrow, and he transforms everyone he meets along the way. Meanwhile, Albert, unable to forget his equine friend, searches the battlefields of France to find Joey and bring him home.

Movie

8.3

1957

Paths of Glory

A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.

Movie

7.8

1930

All Quiet on the Western Front

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

Movie

7.8

1987

Hachiko

The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.

Movie

7.0

2023

The Zone of Interest

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

Movie

7.0

2017

Sekigahara

The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.

Movie

6.5

1971

The Last Valley

People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years' War try to exist in peace with a group of soldiers occupying the valley.

Movie

7.4

1992

The Last of the Mohicans

In war-torn colonial America, in the midst of a bloody battle between British, the French and Native American allies, the aristocratic daughter of a British Colonel and her party are captured by a group of Huron warriors. Fortunately, a group of three Mohican trappers comes to their rescue.

Movie

6.8

2010

Beneath Hill 60

The true story of Australia's cat-and-mouse underground mine warfare—one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented and mystifying conflicts of WW I. It was secret struggle BENEATH the Western Front that combined daring engineering, technology and science. Few on the surface knew of the brave, claustrophobic and sometimes barbaric work of these tunnellers.

Movie

7.9

2025

Truth & Treason

When loyalty to country becomes loyalty to a lie, one teen risks everything to expose the truth. With the Gestapo closing in, he must decide what it really means to be a good German.

Movie

6.1

2015

Field of Lost Shoes

A group of teenage cadets sheltered from war at the Virginia Military Institute must confront the horrors of an adult world when they are called upon to defend the Shenandoah Valley.

Movie

6.9

2006

Flags of Our Fathers

There were five Marines and one Navy Corpsman photographed raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. This is the story of three of the six surviving servicemen - John 'Doc' Bradley, Pvt. Rene Gagnon and Pvt. Ira Hayes - who fought in the battle to take Iwo Jima from the Japanese.

Movie

6.7

2020

A Call to Spy

The story of Vera Atkins, a crafty spy recruiter, and two of the first women she selects for Churchill's "secret army": Virginia Hall, a daring American undaunted by a disability and Noor Inayat Khan, a pacifist. These civilian women form an unlikely sisterhood while entangled in dangerous missions to turn the tide of the war.

Movie

6.8

2012

Outlaws - For Greater Glory

A chronicle of the Cristeros War (1926-1929), which was touched off by a rebellion against the Mexican government's attempt to secularize the country.

Movie

7.0

1983

The Scarlet and the Black

Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.

Movie